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First of all, I apologize if some of you have already answered this before elsewhere on tripadvisor, but I really could use some help with my trip.

I will be visiting Basel, Switzerland in early April. I really wanted to see the Vitra Design Campus in Weil am Rhein as well as the Porsche and Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

I am planning to stay 1 day in Weil am Rhein to check out the Vitra campus and 2 days in Stuttgart (1 day to see the 2 museums and 1 day to see the city). Is this okay time wise ? Are the two automotive museums close to each other ? or in different parts of town that requires train / bus ?

After Stuttgart, I will need to return to Basel or Zurich to catch my flight. My question is what is the best way to get to all these places ? I will most likely be using public transportation instead of renting a car, unless it is a lot easier with car or cheaper with car.

Trains ? Buses ? Combination I guess.. from what station to what station ? I would appreciate any tips or information.

For train information, look at www.bahn.com . For parts of your trip it may be cheaper to use a Baden-Wuerttemberg day train ticket which will cover all the public transportation in this German state except the fast long-distance IC, EC and ICE trains, and also regional trains to Basel and Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Another restriction with this ticket is no travel before 9AM on weekdays. The cost of this ticket is 21€ for the first person, and an additional 4€ per person up to a grand total of 5 passengers.

In Stuttgart, neither automotive museum is close to the city center. To visit both, get a 2-zone day ticket ( www.vvs.de ) which will allow you to ride the buses, U-bahns and S-bahns all day with Stuttgart. The Porsche Museum is on the S-6 line at Neuwirtshaus (Porscheplatz), and there are several ways to reach the Mercedes Benz Museum by train, S-bahn, U-bahn and/or bus. If you go to this forum's Mercedes Benz page, travel directions will be given.

Note that some aspects of Vitra (like Zaha Hadid's Fire Station-her first constructed building, and other fenced-off buildings at Vitra) require a pre-booked, time-stamped tour. If you have a strong interest in industrial design, you could put 8 hours into Vitra, but I'd settle for half a day. The big building has a nice small restaurant with low prices. Ask for a password for free WiFi.

You might want to consider the Fondation Beyeler art museum in the part of Basel closest to Weil am Rhein. (Their restaurant was fully booked, so I went to a nearby pizzeria.) While I was in a car, I found traffic in Weil am Rhein VERY slow due to the width of the road, the number of traffic lights, and the number of industrial-sized trucks.

I just found out from a coworker that Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp (considered to be an architectural gem) is not too far from Basel. Now considering the list of places I am hoping to visit - the two automotive museums near Stuttgart, the Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein and the cathedral in Ronchamp. Does it still make sense to use public transport or will I be better off just renting a car ?

Here in US, it's very simple to rent a car and gasoline plus rental insurance isn't expensive at all. Not sure how expensive it is for the same in Switzerland. I have read on some forums that foreigners can get an infraction for anything from speeding to changing lanes to going too slow (and they are very expenive tickets). I did a quick search on Avis for a 5 days rental (small size Golf) picking up and returning in Zurich, and the estimated price was at 450 CHF (includes insurance and GPS, but excludes gasoline of course). Seems like public transport would be cheaper.

If you enjoy architecture, then Weissenhofsiedlung ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weissenhof_Estate ) will be of interest to you. World-famous architects designed houses for a 1927 international architectural exhibition in Stuttgart ( www.stuttgart-tourist.de ). There is a small museum in one of the houses. Both the Mercedes Benz and Porsche Museums are also interesting architecturally besides their automotive contents. Two other architecturally significant buildings are the world's first modern TV tower completed in 1956 and the train station. Besides giving nice views over Stuttgart, the tower in Höhenparkkillesberg (near Weissenhofseidlung) is also very architecturally interesting as it has two double helix stairways connecting the platforms and is guyed down to a small titanium sphere on which the tower rests. The tourist information office (opposite the train station on Koenigstrasse) has a nice free booklet on Stuttgart's architecturally significant buildings. Oh, there is also a nice Hundertwasser apartment nearby in Plochingen.

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